4 Things That CEOs And Business Owners Should Do On Facebook

This week on the Wednesday Edition of Talk Business With Howard (February 6, 2013 at 11 AM/Eastern Time) on Blog Talk Radio, the guest will be Andrea Vahl, co-author of the book, Facebook Marketing: All-In-One. The book is now in its second edition. Thank you, Andrea, for the guest blog post and for being on the radio show. – Howard-

A recent poll by CEO.com showed that of the Fortune 500 CEOs, only 7.6% were on Facebook, only 1.8% use Twitter, and 70% have no social media presence at all. I think that is a missed opportunity.

Whether you are the CEO of a large company, small company, or somewhere in between, you have the ability to connect with your customers in a unique way through social media. The world of marketing is changing and people crave a more authentic relationship with companies and brands. Facebook is a perfect medium to connect with your customers. Here are some steps you can take to start utilizing Facebook better.

#1: Have A Facebook Profile That Is Open To Subscribers/Followers

Personal profile posts are being shown more in the News Feed over Pages. You have the opportunity as the face of your company to send out some of the company information and marketing messages and be more visible than your own company Page!

But don’t worry, you don’t have to “friend” everyone. You can open up the Follow Button. The button used to be called “Subscribe” but now it’s known as the Follow button. If you go to someone’s personal profile, you can follow their posts that they make “public”.

You don’t have to worry about privacy, the Facebook Privacy settings have gotten much better so that you can control who sees each update. You can post picture of your kids to your friends and family only, and you can post updates about your company to just your followers if you like. Your customers want to connect with you personally on Facebook (not just via your Facebook Page) and the Follow button will give them that personal connection. Find out more here: http://www.facebook.com/about/follow

#2: Link Your Profile To Your Page

The next thing you want to do is to make sure your profile connects to the Company Page. If people are searching and finding your personal profile on Facebook, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find your Company Page. Sometimes people have listed where they work and it’s not properly linked to their Facebook Page, instead a strange “Community Page” is created with that same name and it has a suitcase icon. Then people start Liking that Community Page rather than your real Facebook Page.

All you need to do is to delete that Page from your Work and Education section on your About area (click Edit in the About section), then add in the correct Facebook Page.

For example, this person has her profile showing an empty Community Page as the place she works but she actually has a company Page that isn’t linked here.

What you need to do is go in and edit your profile and delete that community Page.

Then start typing your actual Facebook Page name to connect it properly.

#3: Update Your Profile Regularly

Once you start getting followers, you want to send updates regularly so people see your posts in the News Feed. You can control who sees the updates by making the post public or by making Facebook Lists where you have only a select group who can see your post.

#4: Post Updates From Yourself On Your Facebook Business Page

Connect with your Facebook Page Fans by letting them know that the update is coming directly from you. A way to do this is to sign your name to a post since it will have the Facebook Page name attached to the post. This is a great thing to do especially during a time where there may be issues that people are complaining about.

Or you may consider writing a blog post from time to time that is shared on your Facebook Page so people can read a longer message directly from you.

Finally, make sure you have some fun. Facebook is a social place and it’s ok to display the human side of your business. Business isn’t B2C or B2B – it’s P2P – People to People. We’d love to hear from you. What are you doing on Facebook as the CEO or business owner? How has it benefitted your business? Tell us in the comments below.

Andrea Vahl is a Social Media Consultant, Speaker, and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One specializing in helping businesses grow with social media. For more information, visit: www.AndreaVahl.com. Get her free Quick Start Guide to Social Media for Business at www.AndreaVahl.com/freereport

Join Andrea and me on Wednesday, February 6, 2013, at 11 AM/Eastern Time for the live broadcast of the radio show. To listen to the live broadcast, click here. You can also bookmark this page to listen to the replay of the show. The replay will be posted at the top of the page on Wednesday afternoon.